Fall

The kids have been getting back to serious play. You know, flipping your bike upside down to make ice cream. Sitting on the rock in the flower bed and using it as your cash register in your flower shop. Serious business, this imaginative play. I've been a more than willing participant, because if the kids need play, then I am a wilting flower wanting for the water and sunlight of being outside with sidewalk chalk. I think the oven temperatures of summer, complete with the ticks, mosquitoes, and other pestilences are on the wane ::knocks on wood:: The hot summer can really hamper children's play is what I have learned. We don't even have cable but the mediated life has a way of eclipsing the active imaginative life that it sort of atrophies. Shameful, really.

So I am welcoming the cooler temperatures (even though it is still hot enough to sweat whilst walking at mid-day here) and I am welcoming afternoons that are still sunlit.

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Looking forward to this fall: - Going to Gatlinburg with six other families - Soup Swap - Chattanooga Market and all the harvesty produce and merch therein - My sister and her beaufriend visiting and watching my sister ace a half-mar in October - Running a 5k in early November - Cousin Justin from Canadia coming for Turksgiving - Going back to Fork & Pie for pumpkin pie

*** Some snaps from our outing to Rock City which is totally awesome and you all have to come to #CHA and experience!

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Obama 2012

My name is Kendra.I live in the belt buckle of the Bible Belt. I am an evangelical Christian mother of two. I am voting to reelect President Obama on November 6, 2012.

*** This is not a post about my reasons for voting on the Democratic ticket. This is about my cherished freedom as a woman to exercise my voting right. This is about my love of a country where my second generation parents have succeeded and my immigrant in-laws came to operate their own business while still observing sabbath. This is about my excitement as a campaign volunteer.

Today I phonebanked for the Obama campaign. It was inspiring. There were just a few volunteers at Tennessee headquarters. I used my Google Voice phone to call battleground state voters and I had some pleasant exchanges with my fellow Americans--many of whom were not planning to vote for Obama.

The other night I watched the DNC Convention from the same place. There were black faces, white faces, old, young, middle-aged. There were students and professors and professionals and nurse anesthetists :) We whooped and clapped and some people invoked the name of Divinity in response to the high notes of speeches delivered live from Charlotte, NC.

My experience as a volunteer for a highly divisive campaign has been heartwarming. It has reflected the best of what I believe a two-party system can achieve on its best days. I was inspired to think warmly today about a country that I already love. Sometimes I don't like America, but I will always love this great nation.

Whomever you are planning to support in this election, I hope you are registered to vote and will get involved in the campaign. I expect you will not regret it!

*** Phonebanking And she did not just caption that "Call Me, Maybe."

Crash

I couldn’t resist having a proper look-see at a newish house just a stone’s throw from Bible College campus. It’s your standard three bed, three bath McMansionvilla. The South loves itself a “bonus room,” and every realtor must play an infomercial host, “Oooh, but there’s more!” and they toss in this whole extra parlor like it’s a potholder and I’m supposed to throw my panties in the air, “Yip! Yip! Yaw! Too good to be true!” Trust, the home I was looking at is really a four bed cookie cutter deal. I set up an appointment for a private viewing of the house.

And by that I mean I asked expressly for trouble.

As I approached the cul-de-sac wherein my prospect sat, I got all nervous nelly about meeting the realtor Miss Laverne. I had corresponded with Miss Laverne, who mercifully appreciates the technology of text messaging, in lieu of speaking telephonically (gasp, perish the thought) or e-mailing from her AOL account which is totally acceptable practice in Confederate commerce. I believe phonebooks are even used here for purposes other than boosting up small children to the dinner table (?).

I was wearing my crusty gym clothes. I was also wearing a helmet--which, by the way is adorbs with a ladybug print--because I was driving our motorscooter. We had just gotten it fixed (the scooter) and one of the quirky handlebars that has the power to accelerate was, turns out, no longer quirky.

You know that part in your nightmare when you can’t hit the brakes? It’s awful something fierce, isn’t it?

Oh. I. Broke. Oh. I. Oh. That. Happened.

The garage door was completely busted inward. And the crash was not a silent one. Ha.

Miss Laverne came out and I wasn’t sure if I should turn on the waterworks or if I should just pretend like I was not the same person who had come for the private viewing at 10 a.m. Nope! Hehe! I’m just the person who promptly at 10 a.m. crashed her motorino into the garage door of strangers who are trying to sell their house.

In the end I decided to cry but I was so sweaty and shocked that my tear ducts were paralyzed.

Miss Laverne was so kind, though, and, honestly, a good two minutes of me making the ugly face trying to cry was enough for her to ask me if I wanted to check out the rest of the house. I was unhurt as was the bike so we stood the bike and myself up and we went all HGTV on that place.

The rest of the house was really gorge. Bright and palatial, but like I said, I was still quite stricken by the accident. It sort of felt a little insincere to remark on the lovely tray ceilings when I had just effectively disassembled one of the major egresses of the home.

So, this must be a sign, right? That I'm meant to own property in both hemispheres. The North and the South. Think the installment plan is the ticket. Gonna lock down the garage first, work my way up to the kitchen, put the half-bath on layaway. Lock it up by end of fiscal year.

I spoke with Miss Laverne later in the day about our options, in terms of repairing the garage or just waiting to put an offer in on the house wherein, apres an official inspection, we would ask the owners to repair the unsightly garage door before we bought it.

Miss Laverne might have even asked God to bless my heart for cracking a joke like that;I knew I was dealing with a true Southern belle.

I then asked God to bless her heart. No, I didn’t really, but I wonder what she would have said to that. Bless your heart. No. Bless YOURS.

Oopsanooga.

The above described incident occurred some months ago and all damages have been paid for and repaired. Except the damage to my ego :)